Saturday, December 19, 2009

There's an article in the Guardian about Philip Davies MP who apparently "bombarded" the government's equalities watchdog (Trevor Phillips) in a personal crusade about the evils of political correctness.

A Tory MP has bombarded the government's equalities watchdog with a series of extraordinary letters about race and sex discrimination, in a one-man campaign against "political correctness".
In the latest of 19 letters sent since April 2008, and likely to dismay equal rights campaigners, Philip Davies asks Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission: "Is it offensive to black up or not, particularly if you are impersonating a black person?"
In a postscript to the letter, he asks "why it is so offensive to black up your face, as I have never understood this".
Davies, MP for Shipley and "parliamentary spokesman" for the Campaign Against Political Correctness lobby group, also asked:
• Whether the Metropolitan Black Police Association breaches discrimination law by restricting its membership to black people. He compared this to the BNP's whites-only policy, which the far-right party has now agreed to change.
• Whether the women-only Orange prize for fiction discriminates against men. • Whether it was racist for a policeman to refer to a BMW as "black man's wheels".
• Whether it was lawful for an advert for a job working with victims of domestic violence to specify that applicants had to be female and/or black or ethnic minority.
• Whether a "Miss White Britain" competition or a "White Power List" would be racist, after Phillips justified the existence of Miss Black Britain prizes and the Black Power List. "Is there any difference legally or morally than publishing a white list? Do you think this entrenches division?"
• Whether anti-discrimination laws ought to be extended "to cover bald people (and perhaps fat people and short people)".
Phillips (or on one occasion an adviser) answered each letter at length, with the exception of the last query, to which the EHRC chairman gave a succinct reply: "The answer to your question is no."

Now regardless of his politics, Philip Davies is making a valid point about hypocrisy and particularly the hypocrisy of those who maintain you can't be racist if you aren't "white" yes I'm talking about you and your weird beliefs Jo Brand.
This is a problem for the majority in the country as if they question all of the above they usually get tarred by the epithet "racist" whether they are or aren't. The last 20 years or so has seen an almost constant build up of politically correct thought crimes, where you simply can't say what you think without being howled down by the politically correct brigade. So naturally people stopped saying what they thought, didn't stop them thinking it though. This gradual crushing down of spoken and written dissent has lead to a feeling of alienation in the public that becomes ever more aggrieved when the minority apparently can and do get away with racism or discrimination against the majority.
Well you can only do this so long and it comes back to haunt you, people will question the motives and the hypocrisy of the MOBO (Music of black origin) awards simply because you don't have a MOWO (Music of white origin) award. Not that there's any particular need of a MOWO, but because some feel the need of a MOBO and would speak out against any attempt to have a MOWO because it's obviously racist. Hence one of the reasons for the rise of the BNP, people might hate what they stand for, but in certain aspects at least they say it like it is.

As an example of hypocrisy, take a look at this Eddie Murphy sketch and think about how it would look if another comedian "blacked up"

Philip Davies is right, there's a stench of hypocrisy in the maintaining of equal rights in this country.

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annotations:

Yes, you're right. Of course we have always had some sort of political correctness. Deference to class was political correctness of a sort. You thought the Laird was a twat but of course you weren't allowed to say so. Or religion perhaps, when everyone went to church. People didn't suddenly stop believing in God in the 1960s, it was just that you didn't lose your job any more for telling your boss you just didn't have a church.

I have had to go to all sorts of meetings in the local council's offices and the political correctness brigade there is just unreal. Of course no one says what they mean; they talk in clichés that mean almost nothing for fear of offending someone somewhere. Always, I imagine people who wouldn’t be offended.

I remember being at one of these politically correct charged meetings where the chairman was referred to as the chair (I wonder what she would have done had I sat on her). The air was thick with politically correct formulaic speech, and then the "chair" asked, as someone else required to use the room for some sort of exercise class after we had finished, COULD THE MEN PLEASE STAY BEHIND AND STACK THE CHAIRS????? I suggested that would be fine, if the women would pop off to the kitchen and make a nice cup of tea!